LIMA BEEN

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LIMA BEEN

Okay, okay, I’ll admit that title does not rise to the level of exquisite word-play that I have diligently served up over these past few months but I’m typing this past midnight after another day of incessant walking and gawking and I’m feeling a bit tired… My apologies. Onto the sights!

Most definitely still a city that bears the mark of its 70s growth, Lima is sprawling, with many of its neighborhoods quite distant from each other, in geography and economy, housing more than ten million people at last count. We haven’t gotten to most of them but I can testify to the fact that walking from one to another, especially crossing over between night and day, teaches you more about a city than any guide book can ever tell.

We started to notice a funny thing on these long walks as we came across small parks: their benches were often filled with lovers, talking, embracing, laughing, kissing… Such a lovely sight, systematically repeated in every green section we saw. Could the local pollen be an aphrodisiac?… Not quite but close, we learned later from a native that Peruvians have delightfully chosen bench necking over a dinner and a movie as date venues and it gives the city, especially on a beautiful sunny day, an air of joy unlike any other I know. And that is none the truer than in the aptly-named Parque Del Amor, a small garden completely made from hemicycled benches and marked by its iconic statue, the embracing lovers… Priorities in urban planning.

Awesome.

We walked further through the city, taking lovely roads to lovely hills…

…and eventually over the low mountains onto the beach…

A pebble beach not for lounging at all but to launch onto what looks like vicious waves for brave surfers to tame. Our children, brave surfers they never were, quickly retreated…

Another lovely day in the Peruvian capital but it is time to head up north and see what else we can discover…